What's In Your Lunch Box???

Lunch, in my opinion, is one of the most inconvenient meals of the day. I love, love, love breakfast. All breakfast foods: oatmeal, eggs, smoothies; you name it. Not only does breakfast taste great, but its also quick and easy to make. Dinner does take a little more effort, especially after a long days work, but its yummy enough to make up for it. But lunch? If you work the average 8 hour day, then you can not make and eat lunch at home. So either you buy lunch or you pack it.

If you buy lunch, especially in the city, the cost can add up. A $10 salad, 5 days a week could buy you a pair of shoes.

But packing lunch can be tricky. It takes some thought and preparation ahead of time. And it can get super boring. Deli sandwiches are so bleh. But the prep time is definitely worth the savings, so what can you pack that is more exciting and nutritious than a sandwich and bag of trips.

I have decided that each week I will do a post about what I am packing for lunch and where I found the recipe, because I am not the best chef and am always searching for tasty, easy, meals to make.

So I always start my meal prep with a breakfast snack. Which honestly can turn into breakfast if I am running late in the morning. But I always love a good breakfast snack. You know that time, right around 10am, between your 7am breakfast and 12pm lunch? That is what the breakfast snack is for.

This week I got my recipe from the blog In My Bowl. They are Maple Spiced Sweet Potato Pots and they only take about 15 minutes to make (not accounting for the chia pudding which needs to be in the refrigerator overnight). They taste like sweet potato pie. So delicious. And they are packed with 9.5 grams of protein!.

Next is lunch. In my searching, I found Chicken Vegetable Salad Rolls on the Cooks for Cocktails blog. Yummmm. I was so excited to make them. They have veggies in them, are wrapped in local rice paper wraps, and even had the recipe for dipping sauce. But, as it turns out, none of the three grocery stores that I went to had rice paper wraps! What?!

So I had to improvise. And I made a salad. I made the chicken, carrots and cabbage and actually sautéed it in the dipping sauce recipe. Then I put it over a bed of lettuce with alfalfa sprouts and some more carrots. It actually turned out pretty good. And next time I'll go to an Asian Market before buying all of the other ingredients for these salad rolls.

The next must have in your lunch box is fruit. Now, fruit does contain a lot of sugar, so you do not want to eat too much fruit in a day, vegetables are definitely the way to go. But as a light snack a piece of fruit is perfect. I like grapes because they tend to be pretty filling. Apples are good too, and they last a while so you can buy enough apples for the whole week.

I also love bananas. But if I put it in my smoothie in the morning, which I normally do, I won't bring another one as a snack for later in the day.

Now, lets be honest, you can never have too many snacks, well healthy snacks. In fact, its better to pack a few snacks, just in case you get hungry and there are chocolate chip cookies left over from the office meeting in the kitchen; tempting you.

I like to pack a protein bar. I am not loyal to a specific protein bar. This week it is Special K while I wait for my RX Bars to arrive in the mail. You should check them out, they only have a few, natural ingredients and are still packed with protein.

Another option is hummus and sliced up carrots are cucumbers, or any other veggie for that matter.

This week I also made some indulgent bites. I have an extreme sweet tooth. And I found these Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Balls. Now, no, they are not the most healthy snack in the world, but I like to think they are better and more nutritious than a bar of chocolate. Each ball is 170 calories and only 6 grams of sugar.

Unfortunately when I made them this week I forgot the dates needed for this recipe, so they are a little dry. So definitely don't forget the dates. But if your like me and need a little chocolate fix these are perfect!

I would recommend making everything on a Sunday, before the work week. For some reason I never want to cook on a Sunday night so I end up scavenging through leftovers for lunch on Monday, then grocery shopping and cooking after work. Something about Monday nights (or buying another $10 salad) inspires me. This week it took me, I would say, an hour to make everything. Not bad.

And I'll be back next week (I'll shoot for Sunday) with some new easy to prep lunches!

#mealprep #fruit #vegetables #nutritious #breakfastbowls #healthy #snacks #lunch